Category Archives: Theology

A Crucial Eccentricity

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Psalm 113.2

Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time on and forevermore.

The writer, novelist, preacher, and theologian Frederick Buechner died on August 15th at the age of 96. His works attracted those inside and outside of the church and in the wake of his death countless tributes were made on his behalf. Among his remarkable books and witness to the faith, there is one longish quote that has stayed with me ever since I first encountered it: 

“After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested anymore. But not so with grace for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left. Grace is something you can never get, but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about, anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth. A good sleep is grace, and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody? A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace; there’s nothing you have to do, there’s nothing you have to do, there’s nothing you have to do. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life, you might never have been, but you are because the party would never have been complete without you. Here is the world, beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It is for you that I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch: like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”

The passage has come to my mind a lot recently, not only because of Buechner’s death, and not only because “grace” really is such a unique word, but also because he describes grace as a good sleep and it’s been more than a month since I’ve had a good sleep! (I’ve been on paternity leave for a month; Phoebe Wren Mertins was born August 19th, 2022) Nevertheless, Buechner’s willingness to take a “stained glass word” and bring it down to earth is, I think, one of the most important hermeneutical tools in the church today. Therefore, I had decided to offer my own spin on the prompt “Grace is…”

Grace is driving to the hospital in the middle of the night while your wife is in labor, and every person goes out of their way to make sure she makes it straight to the delivery unit. It’s nurses telling us to stop apologizing for the things we need. It’s lactation consultants and pediatricians and doctors who bend over backward to show love and patience during a decisively impatient time. Grace is coming home from the hospital to countless cards and notes from friends and strangers alike rejoicing in the arrival of our daughter. It’s food being delivered to the door and dismissing hand movements every time we try to express our gratitude. Grace is the delivery of various gift cards to grocery stores and restaurants just to make the first few weeks a little easier. It’s the way grumpy old men make fools of themselves when they see you walking around the block with a newborn baby in your arms. It’s the curiosity of wide-eyed children leaving school seeing such a tiny little person and realizing, in some way, they used to be that tiny too. Grace is returning to work after a month with nothing but gratitude and excitement. Grace is waking up in the middle of the night over and over again for yet another diaper change, only to turn the lights on and see your daughter smiling at you. 

Grace is God’s disposition toward us and we cannot earn it or deserve it. The only thing we have to do is reach out and accept it. And once we do, it truly is the difference that makes all the difference. 

Are We Alive?

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On Thursday United Methodists from across the state will arrive in Hampton, VA for Annual Conference. Holy conferencing is in the DNA of those from the Wesleyan Tradition and we gather together in anticipation of the Spirit moving in our midst. It used to be that Annual Conference was a time for worship (and only worship) but over the centuries it has become a time of bureaucratic politicking with a little worship sprinkled on top. I have hope for our gathering this year, the moments in which God’s grace will shine brightly in the darkness, but I am also keenly aware that conferencing often shows the church at her best and her worst. 

Since the 1780s the Wesley brothers used Charles Wesley’s “And Are We Yet Alive” hymn to open society meetings, and the denomination has been doing it ever since. On Thursday the representatives from Virginian Methodism will lift up our voices and sing the same song. It is my hope and prayer that, this year, we might hold fast to the words of the hymn throughout our gathering and know that, no matter what, the divine “yet” of God’s grace is the difference that makes all the difference in the world.

If you’re unfamiliar with the hymn, the lyrics are as follows:

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And are we yet alive, and see each other’s face? 

Glory and thanks to Jesus give for his almighty grace!

.

Preserved by power divine to full salvation here, 

again in Jesus’ praise we join, and in his sight appear.

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What troubles have we seen, what mighty conflicts past, 

fightings without, and fears within, since we assembled last!

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Yet out of all the Lord hath brought us by his love; 

and still he doth his help afford, and hides our life above.

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Then let us make our boast of his redeeming power, 

which saves us to the utter most, till we can sin no more.

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Let us take up the cross till we the crown obtain, 

and gladly reckon all things loss so we may Jesus gain. 

On Thinking Theologically

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Psalm 23.4

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me.

In the 1990’s Jerry Falwell, bastion of theological conservatism, pleaded for funds for his “Save A Baby Homes.” The organization was designed to establish homes, all over the country, where a young woman who decides to continue in a difficult pregnancy could go and receive free, caring support all the way through pregnancy and birth.

And, rather notably, Falwell ended his plea by saying something to effect of, “If we do not give our resources, our money, to this venture, if Bible-believing Christians do not demonstrate through our gifts that we are willing to give to, and sacrifice for, and to support these women, then we have no right to tell them what they should, or shouldn’t, do with their bodies.”

It isn’t easy for ordinary people like us to do some of the extraordinary acts as Jesus commands. “Turning the other cheek” is a lot easier to preach than it is to practice. The same holds true for loving our neighbors as ourselves, particularly when it comes into contact with our theological understanding of reproductive rights.

On Monday evening a draft was leaked of a revision to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that focuses on reproductive rights in the United States. In response, those in favor and those opposed to the draft have been celebrating/protesting in various parts of the country. 

Reproductive rights are often painted as a faith-based matter for a variety of reasons and there are a great myriad of theological positions with regard to the understanding of being bodily creatures. The United Methodist Church, in our Book of Resolutions, both affirms the sanctity of life for all persons born and unborn and, at the same time, we support those who choose the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures by certified medical providers. We are committed to ministering with those who have had an abortion, providing support and encouragement. (You can read more here: Social Principles)

The only time I can remember hearing about abortion in church, prior to becoming a pastor, was in a small group setting as a teenager when one of my peers asked the pastor how we should think theologically about abortion. His response has stayed with me ever since.

He said something to the effect of: “If a woman in our church becomes pregnant and chooses to carry the baby to term, then we have a responsibility to support her in any way that we can – meals, rides, prayers, etc. But the same holds true for the other side of the spectrum. If a woman in our church becomes pregnant and chooses not to carry to term, then we have a responsibility to support her in any way that we can – meals, rides, prayers, etc.” 

I remember thinking his answer was both deeply theological and faithful. I only realized, much later, that not every church feels and thinks that same way.

We do not talk of such things in the church today for a variety of reasons: we prioritize the privacy of the individual, we treat the church as a place to talk about churchy things and not worldly things, we are afraid of upsetting sensibilities, we don’t want to appear too political, etc. 

And yet, we, in large part, have fallen into a fallacy of believing that the most important things in the world are political and can only be handled in a political manner. We therefore worry and lose more sleep over who sits behind the desk in the oval office (or behind the rail in the Supreme Court) than we do over who sits at the throne of the universe (and who comes to be the Judged Judge in our place). 

The church is, and always will be, political but it is political on terms that run counter to the world. Put simply, the church does not exist to proclaim a list of do’s and dont’s, but rather to follow and point to the One who does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. 

Therefore, the most interesting, creative, and faithful solutions we (that is: Christians) have to offer our weary world are not new laws, new politicians, or new social programs (though we certainly can support such efforts). The most important thing we have to offer the world is the church. We best serve the world by showing the world what it is not: a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.

We, the church, exist to be present for others not to judge them or to damn them, but to love them and support them to the end. 

It isn’t easy – but nothing really important ever is.  

The Methodist Blues

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Garrison Keillor, of Lake Wobegon fame, once opined in song about what it means to be part of the people called Methodists:

I’ve been going to church every Sunday morn,

Still don’t know if I’ve been reborn,

I’m sixty years old, is there something I’ve missed?

Or is it just that I’m Methodist?

I’ve got the Methodist blues.

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The organ is soupy and the pastor is bland

Leave afterward and I shake his hand

Sometimes I’d like to shake my fist

That’s what it’s like to be Methodist.

I’ve got the Methodist blues.

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The sound system’s bad, there’s a buzz in the speaker,

The budget is busted, the collection is meager,

This great big debt load we been carryin’

Maybe we oughta be Unitarian.

–

People gossip about who did what,

The ladies circle is a pain in the butt.

Want to slap their face or at least their wrist,

But I can’t cause I’m a Methodist.

I’ve got the Methodist blues.

–

We’re not big on shows and dances,

Mixed drinks or big romances,

I’ve been hugged but never French kissed,

That’s because I’m a Methodist.

I’ve got the Methodist blues.

–

Everybody wants to sit in the back pews,

Want the sermon to reflect their views,

Some of these Christians, they are the rudest.

What do you say we try being Buddhist?

–

The same ten people always volunteer,

Half of them old, the others just weird,

How do we ever manage to persist?

We do it by being Methodist!

I’ve got the Methodist blues.

–

People offer to help then they don’t remember,

It can make you almost lose your temper,

Sit and steam and clench your fist,

But you can’t hit them, you’re a Methodist.

I’ve got the Methodist blues.

–

Everyone’s afraid of change.

Don’t like anything new or strange.

Or we get our underwear in a twist,

That’s how it is with a Methodist.

I’ve got the Methodist blues. 

–

We were founded by John Wesley,

Not Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley,

We’re not so hip but we persist,

We go on being Methodist.

–

What does it mean to be Methodist? We’re currently in the midst of a confirmation class at church in which we attempt to answer that very question each Sunday with and for our confirmands. Ask the average Methodist on a Sunday morning what it means to be Methodist and you might hear something about John Wesley, or holiness of heart and life, or prevenient grace. But you’re just as likely to hear about casseroles, singing hymns, and being the via media between Baptists and Catholics.

The longer I serve as a pastor in the United Methodist Church the more I am convinced that, like with marriage, you can only figure it out along the way. One day you’ll be singing a hymn between the pews and realize, “Oh yeah, I do believe this!” Or you’ll walk down to receive the bread and cup and be overwhelmed by what Christ did, does, and will do. Or you’ll sit in the silence of a prayer and receive an assurance that, to use Wesley’s words, “Christ has taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Every denomination carries its own blues. We Methodists even sing about them at the start of every annual conference: “What troubles have we seen / What conflicts have we passed / Fightings without, and fears within / Since we assembled last.”

But that is only part of the song we sing. For it ends thusly:

But out of all the Lord

Hath brought us by His love;

And still He doth His help afford,

And hides our life above.

–

Then let us make our boast

Of His redeeming power,

Which saves us to the uttermost,

Till we can sin no more.

–

Let us take up the cross 

Till we the crown obtain;

And gladly reckon all things loss,

So we may Jesus gain. 

–

Let us therefore boast and rejoice even in our blues, knowing that Jesus is the difference who makes all the difference. 

Tyler

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Grace and peace to each of you in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit,

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Taylor Mertins and, like Jon and Randy, I am a pastor and I serve Raleigh Court United Methodist Church in Roanoke, VA. 

But I grew up in this church, and Tyler was one of my oldest friends.

I am someone who works in the world of words, and I must confess that preparing these words was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

I have 1,001 stories I could tell about Tyler, many of which would not be appropriate to tell in church, and that’s saying something coming from a pastor.

I met Tyler for the first time at my 6th birthday party. My mother had received word that a new family had moved in around the block and she informed me that a boy I never met would be coming to my party because what better way could a child be introduced to a neighborhood.

Let me tell you, that’s an incredible way to parent.

Anyway, I vividly remember this dark haired boy with a cast from his shoulder to his wrist jumping on the bounce house and using his cast to push all the other kids around.

We were fast friends.

There’s a ten year period of my life where I can’t really remember doing anything without Tyler being involved somehow. Our families went on vacation together every year, our first sleepovers were at each others houses, we were together all the time.

Our mothers will tell this story that, one time, they brought all us kids over to Collingwood park and while they stood by the playground with our younger siblings, Tyler and I were running around in the field. And all seemed well, until they really looked at us and they realized we were beating the hell out of each other. So they rushed out into the field and pulled us apart, and the next day were were playing together again.

That is to say: I always felt like Tyler was more of a brother than a friend.

Another confession – during that same ten year period, if I ever got in trouble and some concerned adult asked for my name and my parents name, I never hesitated to say “My name is Tyler Gray, and my parents are Larry and Janet Gray.”

Tyler got in plenty of enough trouble on his own, but Larry and Janet, you probably received at least a few phone calls that were about me and not Tyler.

There are things we did in life that I know we did only because the other one did it. Tyler and I were in cub scouts together and we came to this church for a time on Sunday afternoons to earn our God and Me badge, we went through confirmation together and knelt at this altar in order to respond to God’s grace and mercy, both of which I am sure Tyler did because I did it.

Similarly, Tyler enrolled in German when we were in high school just as I did, and I know for a fact that Tyler never learned a single word. I know he learned nothing because I helped him cheat on every single test and even when he was called upon to stand and respond to our teacher’s questions Auf Deutsch, I would whisper the answer to him and he always answered with a smile on his face.

Entschuldigung Frau.

And it went both ways; I am sure that I signed up to play Ft. Hunt baseball, basketball, and lacrosse because Tyler did. I listened to a lot of punk music in middle school only because Tyler talked about it all the time. I even used to wake up early every morning before school so that I could ride my bike to the Gray’s house and then walk up the hill to ride the bus with Ty.

I wanted to spend as much time with him as I possibly could.

Because I loved him, and he loved me. 

The latter part of high school was rough for Tyler and he went through a lot. So much so that there was a time that we didn’t speak to one another. But when we finally reconnected, one of the first things he told me was that he met a girl on the ski trip.

Sure you did, I thought.

But then he kept talking about Laura, and spent time with Laura, and Tyler started to change, for the better. He became a version of himself that I think he always wanted. In you he found himself. You were the light in his darkness. Your marriage and your girls are a testament to who Tyler became.

He loved you, and you loved him. What a gift.

Larry, Janet, Corey, B, Lauren – you loved Tyler too. You loved the hell out of him. You were patient with him, you were forgiving, you were present.

And he loved you.

No family is perfect, just as no marriage is perfect and no friendship is perfect. But you were all for Tyler in a way that he needed. 

There’s this bit right smack dab in the middle of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome that, for me, I can’t read without thinking about Tyler. Paul has been riffing on the wonders of God’s love and it crescendos up to this remarkable declaration: I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What makes such a statement so profound is the fact that all those things are constantly trying to separate us from one another and from God. Life, at times, is a seemingly endless battle between where we are and where we should be or want to be and, no matter what we do, we can’t get there. And then Paul shouts through the centuries, rattling our souls, with the reminder that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more, or any less. Nothing can take us away from the Love that refuses to let us go. 

And yet, the pain of life can sting like nothing else. 

None of us will ever know or understand what happened on Sunday. But today is Good Friday, and if you’ve ever spent time in church you’ll know there really isn’t anything good about today. Churches across the world will gather to worship the King of kings who rules from the arms of the cross. Today is the day we remember Christ’s death.

And, notably, in two of the Gospel accounts Jesus’ final words are, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The incarnate One cries out with his final breaths feeling completely alone, isolated, and abandoned. The Messiah meets his end feeling like he has nothing left.

We will never know what Tyler felt, but Christ does.

And even in death, Jesus isn’t forsaken. 

In three days God gives him back to us.

The promise of Easter is that, one day, we will all feast at the supper of the Lamb with Tyler. We will gather at the table anew when there will be no mourning and no crying.

But that day is not today. Today we weep and we mourn because Tyler is gone.

Sometimes, I fear, we’re too noisy around people who are suffering, trying to make things okay with our words. Nothing will make this okay. What we do need is presence, we need one another. 

So it is my prayer that, in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead that we hold tight to each other. That we give thanks to the Lord who gave Tyler to us. Amen.

By Which Alone We Live

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Psalm 45.1

My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.

Poetry is not my forte.

That is, I can neither write poetry nor do I often understand it.

Give me a big work of theology, or nonfiction, or fiction and I will plow through the words.

But poetry? No thank you.

Poetry, unlike just about all other writing, is not meant to be consumed quickly.

Poetry takes time.

And so I force myself to read poems out loud and with a slow pace, otherwise I run the risk of leaving the poem no wiser than I was at the beginning.

Lots of scripture is poetic, or at least it’s meant to be received poetically. We are not called to be masters of the text but instead we are called to be servants of the Word. 

And that takes time.

Frankly, it’s why we keep returning to the same scriptures year after year because those words reveal to us something about the Word. And when we come closer to the Word we discover more about who we are and whose we are. 

A few years ago, while forcing myself through a collection of poems, one jumped out at me. It was so powerful and so moving that I read it over and over not because of a lack of comprehension, but because it was so true. 

That poem is below and I encourage you to take the time to read it slowly, read it out loud if you have to, until you can rest in the knowledge that grace really is the fund by which alone we live.

Original Sin by Wendell Berry

Well, anyhow, it preserves us from the pride

of thinking we invented sin ourselves

by our originality, that famous modern power.

In fact, we have it from the beginning

of the world by the errors of being born,

being young, being old, causing pain

to ourselves, to others, to the world, to God

by ignorance, by knowledge, by intention,

by accident. Something is bad the matter 

here, informing us of itself, handing down

its old instruction. We know it

when we see it, don’t we? Innocence

would never recognize it. We need it

too, for without it we would not know 

forgiveness, goodness, gratitude,

that fund of grace by which alone we live. 

Wendell Berry

What Is Love, If Not Jesus Persevering?

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“I can’t stand people who say, ‘Well, when it’s all said and done, what’s really important is that we love one another.’ No! You’ve gotta love one another rightly. And how do we do that? Well, in the Gospel of John Jesus declares, ‘I call you my friends and now you can love one another.’ Remember: to be a friend of Jesus didn’t turn out very well for most of the disciples. The love that moves the sun and the stars (Dante) is that love that sustains the disciples through the challenge of dying – that is the love that is rightly seen at the center of the Christian life. Love is rightly understood to be the very substance of relation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” – Stanley Hauerwas

If you check out any church website, or examine any sign on a church property, you are pretty much guaranteed to see something about love. “We love everyone at this church!” “All are welcome here!” “We have open hearts, open minds, open doors!”

Which is all good and fine, but it’s not true. At least, not really. 

The church is in the business of welcoming all people but then we usually tell them, explicitly or implicitly, that they need to start acting like us. That is: we are fine with loving people until they fit the version of themselves that we want them to be.

Love, then, is radically coercive and predicated on how we view one another rather than how God views us.

Or, in some churches, our understanding of what it means to love remains forever in the realm of sentimentality and we do the bare minimum to maintain relationships that never extend to anything behind polite hellos. 

Stanley Hauerwas, on the other hand, rightly observes that we know what love looks like because we know Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love, then, isn’t whatever we view on the Hallmark channel or celebrate around on Valentine’s day. Love isn’t a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates. 

Love is cruciform.

Love is death and resurrection.

Love is coming down into the muck and mire of this life to make something of our nothing. 

And, because I often think music does a better job at expressing theological principles than mere words alone, here are some tunes to get us thinking of what it means to love rightly.

Natalie Bergman will be releasing her first solo record “Mercy” on May 7th. The album is a beautiful amalgamation of psychedelia and gospel and it follows her search for hope and salvation amidst the loss of both of her parents in a car accident. The song “Home At Last” is a profound reflection on love and loss with some wicked harmonies.

J.E. Sunde is a singer/songwriter who hails from Minneapolis. “Sunset Strip” has a super-catchy melody with harmonies that are reminiscent of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Oddly, it feels upbeat but it delivers a gut punch of repentance: “Yes I did wrong but you know I confessed it / I wrote this song just to prove that I meant it / But now you’re gone and I feel empty / I feel empty I feel empty.”

Leon Bridges has one of those voices that feels out of time, in a good way. “Like A Ship” is a cover of T.L. Bennet gospel tune from 1971 and it sees Bridges lifting up his silky smooth voice with a groovy baseline on top of some tight drums. A gospel choir belts out the harmonic anthem and the song, appropriately, ends with an organ solo that would delight any Sunday morning church crowd. 

The Way Things Can Be

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Despite the protests of fearful and cynical individuals who decry that “we are who we are,” and that “things are doomed to stay the same,” and that “it doesn’t do any good to do any good because nothing ever changes” – that’s not the proclamation of the Gospel!

We are indeed a sinful people. We do terrible things and terrible things are done to us. Just this week saw yet another innocent black man die at the hands of the police and people all across the country have tribalized themselves, again, putting up walls of division rather than avenues of connection. 

We are a people sick and tired – whether we’re sick and tired in our boring and monotonous lives, or we’re sick and tired of all the horrendous things that keep happening no matter how hard we declare that other people need to change.

And so much of this is because we have failed to open our eyes to all of the wild possibilities that life after Easter makes possible. We have been freed from the tyranny of sin and death – they no longer have control over us. And yet, we keep insisting that they are the most important things in the world. It’s why we spend more money on the military than we do on social uplift. It’s why we ask to tell people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps even when they don’t own any boots. It’s why we keep viewing people through the lens of sin rather than the lens of grace. 

But here’s the good news, the really truly good news of life after easter: If God can raise a crucified and dead Jesus from the grave, then never again can we be so sure of what is and isn’t possible. 

Jesus is alive! 

Because of Easter, we don’t believe in rejection – we believe in resurrection. We aren’t defined by what we’ve failed to do – we are defined by what Jesus has done. We can’t stay shackled to the way things were or are – God has sent us free for the way things can be. 

Here are some tunes that can help us wrestle with the already but not yet of what it means to be a Christian in the world today:

Mandolin Orange’s “Wildfire” tells the epic narrative of slavery, sin, and The South coupled with guitar, mandolin, and haunting harmonies. The duo from Chapel Hill, North Carolina use the metaphor of a wildfire to convey how hatred has always rested at the heart of “the Land of the Free” and spreads, frighteningly, even now. 

Kevin Morby released “Beautiful Strangers” in 2016 as a protest song that feels/sounds more like a hymn than it does an anthem of hoped-for societal change. All of the proceeds from the song have gone to Everytown For Gun Safety (a nonprofit aimed at gun violence prevention) and Morby still plays the song at every live performance in order to help “spread the word.” The percussion propels the song forward, the acoustic guitar is wonderfully melodic, but its Morby’s voice and lyrics that remain long after the song ends. 

Do yourself a favor: Carve our 15 minutes to sit down and listen through the entirety of Ross Gay’s incredible poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” set to the flowing synths of Bon Iver. The poem proclaims a degree of wonder for that which has been given in addition to that which has been taken away (Job 1.21). And, because I don’t know how else to convey it, the whole thing feels alive. Enjoy. 

Proof, Poop, & Pastoral Care

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Is it important for Christians to have proof of God’s existence? What happens when we read verses out of context from the Bible? What, exactly, is pastoral care? 

I was recently invited to participate in a recording for the 1000 Question Christian podcast in which we wrestled with answering the questions above. The whole conceit of the podcast is putting two clergy together to answer questions that people might be too afraid to ask their actual pastors. And, in a twist of fate (or the providence of God!), I was paired up with Seungsoo “RJ” Jun who, until recently, served the church that I will begin serving in July! If you would like to listen to the podcast you can check it out here: Proof, Poop, & Pastoral Care

A Dangerous Time For Christians

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“I have always thought that Lent is a dangerous time for Christians. This time in the church year, I fear, tempts us to play at being Christian. We are to discipline our lives during Lent in order to discover and repent of those sins that prevent us from the wholehearted worship of God. That is a perfectly appropriate ambition, but we are not very good at it. We are not very good at it because, in general, we are not very impressive sinners. Just as most of us are mediocre Christians, so we are mediocre sinners. As a result, Lent becomes a time we get to play at being sinners while continuing to entertain the presumption that we are not all that bad… I am not suggesting that Lenten disciplines do not have a place. Giving up something we will miss may help us discover forms of self-centeredness that make us less than Christ has made possible. But, hopefully, we will find ways to avoid playing at being sinful. Lent is not a time to play at anything but rather a time to confess that we would have shouted ‘Crucify him!’” – Stanley Hauerwas

If Hauerwas is right, and Lent is a dangerous time for Christians, we should certainly be careful about what we say and do during this season. I’m treating this Lent as an opportunity to come to grips with the condition of my/our condition. That is, I’m trying to place myself squarely in the category of sinner rather than in the category of self-righteous.

Which is no easy thing.

I remember one Good Friday when I stood before the gathered congregation and encouraged everyone to stand to sing the hymn “Ah, Holy Jesus.” It’s a strange hymn in a minor key and we all struggled through it, but when the service was over there was a woman waiting for me in the narthex who declared, “If we ever sing that song again, I am never coming back to the church.”

I inquired as to what exactly it was about the sound that upset her so much and she said, “I never would’ve crucified Jesus! And I’m offended that I had to sing those words.”

Verse 2: Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? / Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! / ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; / I crucified thee.

There is a desire within many of us to think that, had we been there, we would’ve been good little disciples and we would’ve stayed with Jesus until the very end. Remember, however, that even the first disciples called by Jesus, the ones who witnessed his healings, ate his miraculous meals, listened to his powerful proclamations, even they abandoned him in the end.

Do you see? The truth is that we can try to convince ourselves of our self-righteousness, but God will not allow us to get away with such arrogance.

That’s why we sing songs like “Ah, Holy Jesus” every year to remember that we, just like everyone else, would’ve shouted crucify.

Lent, to use Hauerwas’ words, isn’t a time to play – it’s a time to be honest about who we are.

But hear the Good News: it’s precisely in knowing who we are that the Lord chooses to forgive us from the cross.